Introduction
The story of the Rhino Armoured car of Australia is a familiar one, with the outbreak of WW2 and the threat of a Japanese invasion cutting Australia off from Allied supplies, as well as UK being beleaguered with their war with Germany and being unable to fulfill Australia’s requirements, a program was undertaken to design an indigenous armoured car that could be manufactured locally.
In 1942 two prototypes were constructed, with the other being an open topped troop carrier. Based on the chassis on a Canadian Military Pattern truck Model 8446 with GMC Model 270 6cyl engine, the same as the Canadian Fox Armoured Car. The hull was of a local design, at 30mm to the front and 11mm to the side and rear, while the turret followed the Crusader general design and was 30mm all around.
Armament consisted of a QF 2-pounder main gun in the turret and a co-axial 0.303 Vickers machine gun. There were 4 crew, a commander, driver, gunner and loader. The heavy armour (by armoured car standards) provided good protection but ultimately the vehicle was deemed to be too heavy at 8.5 tons and the project was cancelled.
Sadly, much of the official documentation for this vehicle has been lost to history. Most of what is known has been entered on the Wiki page. In War Thunder, this would likely be a 1.0-1.3 BR. The frontal armour would likely be resistant to 0.50cal due to the angle and maybe bounce some low tier rounds, but it would also be quite a slow vehicle by car standards, especially up hills.
Specifications
Spoiler
Mass: 8.5 tons
Length: 4.6m
Width: 2.3m
Height: 2.6m
Crew: 4 (Commander, Gunner, Driver, Loader)
Main Armament: QF 2-pounder
Secondary Armament: Co-axial 0.303 Vickers machine gun
Armour: 30mm front plate and all-around turret protection, 11mm in hull to side and rear
Engine: GMC 6cyl Model 270 (around 100hp seems to be the numbers on this engine for the time period)
Top Speed: Around 80km/hr as listed for a Canadian Military Pattern truck, not that it would probably get there very easily
Max Rate of Fire: As with other 2pdr guns, should be around 22 rounds per minute
Interesting. I couldn’t see any reference to the Rhino on the Archives record search website (with or without digital copy). I guess they have stuff in there that isn’t on there.
No, it’s one of those projects where there isn’t a huge amount of information available, or at a least not to my knowledge. Best info I can point you to is “Australian Military Equipment Profiles Vol 3 - Australian Scout and Armoured Cars 1933 to 1945”, only 8 pages are on the Rhino but it gives a pretty good overview I think, but even it that the author admits to lack of details at some points. I was working towards building a model of it, but haven’t gotten back to it for some time, I got side tracked looking for chassis stuff for the Fox, you know what rabbit holes are like.
I attempted to reverse image search all of the photos in this suggestion, but the results were getting flooded with the same “Top 10 Strange Military Vehicles Of WWII” copy pasted on dozens of foreign websites, which made finding anything new somewhat difficult.
I did, however, still manage to find a new image of the Rhino along with its rare APC variant.
